Star I
Star I (originally titled Mission Star) was the first of five interplanetary research missions. The mission was to last approximately at least one to two years & it was expected to make five landings. However, it was cut short during an incident with the fourth PM Andromeda, which malfunctioned & turned into a shock chamber. The crew jettisoned the module & immediately returned to Saturn. Crew Background Launch First landing Second landing Third landing PM incident Lockdown On route to the Zorgulon labs that used to hover over Saturn that have now drifted off near the black hole of Zathura, Fred Jackson & James Knight departed the PM for something to eat in the CM. Orson, alone in the PM, looked out the window & saw the labs 200,000 miles away. Michael Von Braun was given the order from Houston to repressurize the two spacecraft while Sarah Johnson stir the two oxygen & hydrogen tanks. Five seconds after pulling the valve, the stir & repressurization caused the ship to shudder with a ghastly yawning noise. This doesn't stress any of the astronauts, who've become used to this as of their year-long voyage. However, the overhead hatch door that slides down slammed shut. The mechanism on Andromeda that kept this door open was faulty & it had been propped to stay open, but the shudder moved the prop, forcing the door shut. The door slammed & locked, this cut off the CM's access to the PM through the service tunnel & vice versa. Panic Orson, who was in the PM at the time, is agitated by this & floats to the door to leave, but it will not budge. Orson continuously trys to lift the door & fails every time as it is magnetically sealed upon a lockdown directive for when it is closed for jettison. Orson turned on the computer in an attempt to unlock the door. Meanwhile, the astronauts in the tunnel & in the CM heard the door slam. Fred Jackson, Michael Von Braun float to the tunnel & found the door locked. To reopen it, they had try to disconnect it's magnetic lock. Shock The two astronauts continued to bang the door while Orson tryed to cut the connection. The smell of sparks began to fly & the ship rumbled again. This time, the entire inside of the PM electrifyed & Orson Van Houseman was shocked to death. The shock came from a broken wire in the computer that Orson had been trying to rewire to open the door & the circuit boards connected to main bus C in the computer drives was overloaded & the electrical signals could not respond. The shock was an unexpected problem. Had Orson not been rewiring the computer, the shock could've been fatal enough to kill everyone in the CM. Blast The shock in the computer caused the entire PM to shut down all at once & attempt to restart everything at once. This resulted in the APS failure & the DPS to misfire for 14 seconds. The misfire rocked the ship & threw the trajectory off & forced thrusters to fire aimlessly in an attempt to regain course. The DPS shut down after 14 seconds of firing & a PM helium disk then burst. The burst meant that the DPS could no longer fire & the PM was now useless. Discovery About after an hour of smashing the door, it finally opened & Jackson & Knight floated into the PM to find it smelling of sparks & Orson's body floating above their heads. Reentry & splashdown Abort The death of Orson was reported & it shocked the entire Mission Control room. Not wanting the press to learn about it, the agency disconnected reports about the mission. The press desperately tryed to regain connections, but everyone on Saturn were bored of the year-long mission & were only wanting to hear the news about them landing. Decision As the spacecraft continued to head toward the labs, controllers down in Houston comtemplated what to do. They had two options: one, they could jettison the PM & fire the SPS on the back of the SM & return straight home. This option was limited however, as based on their current position in space, a full-critical return burn would take them a week at least to a full ring to get home. The only other option was the free-return trajectory, however, this one was unusable due to the lack of a gravity field around the labs & the trajectory would take even longer, plus the consumable oxygen levels in the Service Module would surely die off before they even got to SM jettison point, when the SM would be jettisoned & the CM would continue it's trajectory that will carry it down into the atmosphere of Saturn. There were also a few other problems, such as supplys. To solve this, the EECOM at the time recommended opening up the pipes & umbilicals & running them into reverse, pulling oxygen & rocket fuel out of the PM & into their respective tanks in the SM. At the same time, the astronauts would be cleaning the PM out of any tools necessary for the CM for reentry. PM Jettison After the oxygen tanks hit 2,000 psi & the rocket tanks were full, the crew shut off the valves & sealed the hatch on the PM, after cleaning out Orson's body. CSM pilot James Knight opened the latches & hit the PM JETT switch. Direct return The crew pitched around to face the direction of Saturn & found no interfering space junk. Knight then activated the autopilot & fired the SPS. For a whole week, the spacecraft flew on it's trajectory to Saturn. SM Jettison During the burn, the CSM consumed 800 pounds of oxygen, leaving them 1,200 left at the time of jettison. However, the burn's speed caused the rate of fuel consumption to consume the fuel to the point of empty. The SPS stalled & finished burning altogether on Ring 12, 11, 140 B.C. at 2:38. The rules of SM jettison were that the crew could only jettison the SM on their return trajectory, 500 miles above the break point of the Saturnian atmosphere. The crew no longer needed the re-ignite the engine as the burn had increased their speed & they allowed the inertia to carry them down to Saturn. For 2 days, the crew sat & awaited jettison point. Finally, on Ring 12, 13, 140 B.C. at 4:56, Sarah Johnson, the expected reentry pilot of the CM, hit the SM JETT switch. Reentry About 30 minutes after jettisoning the SM, the CM was ready to reenter the Saturnian atmosphere. For 3 minutes & 52 seconds, the crew was in radio blackout & they had come down faster than normal by 8 seconds. Splashdown Mission Star ended, splashing down in the South Ocean, at Ring 12, 13, 140 B.C., they ended the mission being 3 rings, 1 week, 2 days, 5 hours, 26 minutes & 38 seconds early. Category:Project Star Category:Andromeda Program Category:Andromeda Galaxy Category:Minerva Category:Triculonia Category:Melmac Category:Zorgulons